Detox from tech? In 2017, it’s all about upping the game

Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner attend the Kanye West Yeezy Season 4 fashion show on September 7, 2016 in New York City.

Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner attend the...

You know a pop psych concept has peaked when it’s adopted by a Kardashian, or to a lesser extent, a Jenner. (You know, the lesser Kardashians.) In November, Kendall Jenner, the 21-year-old model or whatever, temporarily suspended her Instagram account and removed the Twitter app from her phone, telling Ellen DeGeneres, “I felt a little too dependent on it, so I kinda wanted to take a minute to detox.”

Jenner’s “detox” lasted about a week, so her 70+ million followers didn’t have to miss her too long. However, she isn’t alone in feeling, as she told Ellen, “like I just wanted a little bit of a break. I’m always on it … I would wake up in the morning and I would look at it first thing, I would go to bed and it was the last thing I would look at.”

The notion that technology users might benefit from short sabbaticals has been floating around Silicon Valley for years. Back in 2012, a company called the Digital Detox was founded in Oakland to host corporate and individual retreats for (mostly) tech workers overwhelmed by the demands of their devices. Those retreats grew into Camp Grounded, an annual device-free summer camp for adults. (I’ve attended several and written about them for other publications as well as collaborated with its founder.)

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Arianna Huffington, who more than any of us (except maybe Kendall Jenner) made her living off of people’s always-on, always-connected habits, has lately refashioned herself as an advocate for unplugging. With Thrive Global, her post-Huffington Post venture, the onetime queen of clickbait warns of “the danger of being too connected” and laments the “ever-increasing creep of technology — into our lives, our families, our bedrooms, our brains.”

Even Google, a company whose very existence requires us to be plugged into its various products, wants you to detox … a little. In 2015, I found myself at a conference at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View where they handed out “pause button” stickers that they suggested we place on our phones or laptops to remind us to take breaks.

Most of us can agree that detoxing from technology is sometimes needed, but now that the calendar page has turned to 2017, I’ve been thinking that we also need to consider what might be called “retoxing.” Perhaps this year, more than ever, we need to plug in — and hard.

Being connected, alert and alarmed will prove necessary as we enter the first days under a president of the United States who’s an active, some might argue hyperactive, Twitter user. (Though, with a mere 17+ million users, he’s less popular than Kendall Jenner.) With an administration that spins better than the Harlem Globetrotters, awareness will be more useful than mindfulness. As fake news sludges our social streams and propaganda masquerades as information, unplugging feels like a pretty weak response. In a world full of strong toxins, we each need to be stronger.